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Friday, 26 December 2008

HELLO! Happy Christmas! And thank you to you all for such a jubilant waving-off! We have travelled the whole length of the country through rainclouds and sunclouds and in and out of radiator leaks and battery failures to get here, although we have always been "here" wherever we stopped along the way and we've always been heading "there".

Gradually day by day we have settled in to our wheely home and begun to realise why we did it. We have had warm candlelit evenings by the fire eating mince pies with cream and saying to each other - do you remember leaving all those months ago? (when in fact it was just the previous monday) Days turn into weeks when the scenery changes so fast and your days are so full of so many faces. It is wonderful to wake each morning to a new tree outside the round bedroom windows, and in its branches, a new bird singing. As we have headed south, the cold Scottish winter has lessened its grip on our toes and there have even been days on the street selling pictures without coats!

We have been lucky enough to find forests or at least a tree or two beside which to park each night, and have met interested people young and old along the way who have come inside our house to nose about. Sales got gradually better as we headed south too, culminating in a shockingly lucrative two days before Christmas in Canterbury - our favourite town to sell!

The TK is a beast of a thing to manoeuvre around little snaking lanes and is left floundering on slightly inclined motorways, managing a top speed of about 45mph. And of course there have been mechanical stresses too.. our last leg of the journey was made through heavy four lane traffic with a bolt stuck in a radiator hole to quell a leak until we could reach "dry land". I had to leap from the vehicle amid traffic to refill the leaking radiator with water whilst impatient drivers zoomed round us. We just made it to Canterbury and found ourselves heartily welcomed. It was a delight to meet kind folks of all sorts in all corners. The Brothers of St Francis whose wall we sell our pictures against were accommodatingly friendly and the Park & Ride attendant offered redundant tree stakes to burn in our fire which we delightedly collected from the emptying carpark to bemused stares from the departing shoppers.

However we had reached our final selling destination with no leafy corners in which to moor our land boat, and were beginning to worry a little. Thank you for all your kind offers and ideas.. You may well be hearing the rumble of a Bedford engine up your lanes one day :) On the day before Christmas eve Tui got into conversation with a nice bookbinder man inquiring about a commission. The converation turned to houses and horseboxes and he said "well if you are stuck for a place to stop I have an orchard with a barn on it where you'd be welcome to park"... what a perfect turn up that was! And so we trundled away from town with bulging wallets on Christmas eve to find this excellent spot where we have been given kind permission to stay for a while. This was just the most perfect outcome after all these long months of work, exhaustion and bad weather, and there we'll be able to spend a time resting. We can rig up internet and power, make windows and build roofracks, mend radiator holes and add another layer of waterproofing. And I can paint clocks at my desk and we can take afternoons for reading books and wandering about the hedgerows. And after a time there we can wander off again :)

Christmas Day dawned over young apple and quince trees, Kentish oast houses and a draughty barn; the early coo-hoo of a wood pigeon made us feel very much in England. I have noticed a phenomenon amongst folk we meet whilst selling.. they almost all ask "where are you based?" or "where are you from?". It's a strange question anyway, because you never know whether that means where were you born or where do you live.. and when your house moves about it's even harder to answer! It seems an interesting need in people to be able to pinpoint some kind of originating place, and it makes passing through other people's originating places all the more interesting.

I am writing at present from my family home where we have been able to spend lovely time at Christmas; and dotted amongst these words here are pictures from our journey: sunrises in Lincoln and tree-stake fires and peeps in and out of our door. Soon I will be blogging from "our" orchard and I look forward to making stories and creating things from inside our lovely creation of a home.

We wish you all warm and happy tale-filled Christmastimes all over the world wherever you are from and wherever you are going to in 2009!

Hurrah! Many congratulations on the positive start to your adventures. Although I do hope you don't have to spend any more time dodging traffic. Once again, great stories and great images. Your blog is the closest thing to a fireside for me.

Lovely to hear that all is going well and you're looking foward to more adventures in the future. The "where are you from?" question is ancient, isn't it, although I don't suppose most people today are really looking for their kin! Or maybe they are?

What wonderful news! I have been thinking of you and Tui yesterday and wondering where your lovely home would take you and now, here I find out about the next stop in the magic journey.

Be well and happy, enjoy every minute of this trek, radiator holes and all, and keep warm and healthy with my best wishes for a truly artistic year about the start for both of you. Warm thoughts and happy ones to both of you.

Blessed holidays and a wonderful new year to you. I haven't been following your blog for very long, but your art is delightful and your adventures sound marvelous! I wish you all the best in your travels and look forward to your art, your photos, and your accounts in times to come.

So lovely to catch up with you Rima! And very glad to hear things are working out as you dreamed and hoped they would. Isn't it wonderful how the spirit of Christmas manifests so perfectly in the form of the offer of a barn/shelter on Christmas eve? How wonderfully poetic!Enjoy the rest of the Christmastime with your family, and I look forward to hearing more tales from the wanderly-wagon soon.

Hello sweet Rima!!! Thank you so very much for the beautiful print for Emily (the lavender beekeeper)... it arrived in the post on Christmas eve!!! It's absolutely beautiful and she was delighted!!! She will hang it in her sweet baby's nursery. Thank you again and wishing you enchanted travels in your amazing home! xxoo, Dawn

I am so glad to hear you and Tui are doing well... despite a radiator leak on a four lane motorway!!!

Conversations that lead to other avenues are always great.

From and to... My parents are both Indian but from different cultures within India... I'm born here and you're right, living in the East Midlands but having moved from Sussex I still think of myself as being from Sussex. I still don't think of myself as a Midlander, tho' I have come to like it here.

Oh, yes, the journey is a marvelous thing indeed. What a joy it is to be able to follow along with you. You write the story of your living beautifully Rima, weaving in the ups and downs of it all with such grace.

How delightful to hear of your tales 'on the move' Rima, though not of the leaky radiator! I hope the beast behaves itself from now on. Canterbury is indeed a wonderful city and I'm so glad you did really well there.Oooh, did you mention painting clocks???My step daughter absolutely loves her print of the penny farthing teapot and it will soon be on the new baby Poppy's bedroom wall.

Oh, goodness. This is really quite wondrous. I wandered into the realm of your blog and website via the lovely Tess at http://www.anchormast.com I'm an artist and writer (& also a minister who's fortunate to have been able to carve out an unusual & creative path); like you, my imagination (and my work in turn) is well nourished by medieval Europe and keeps a foothold there. Thank you for the hospitable, mysterious, inventive loveliness you offer here. Blessings of the new year to you!

The Hermitage is one of my favourite places to visit. Thank you so much Rima for sharing your adventures and beautiful work with us. I wish you all the best for 2009 and look forward to what life brings your way.Much happiness and health to you always.

WOW what a journey and it hasn't realy started yet...Hope you are fine and wish you luck an inspiration. When your journey ever should lead you to the little country of Holland across the ocean, do feel free to stop by..Blessings:)

About Me

Rima Staines is an artist using paint, wood, word, music, animation, clock-making, puppetry & story to attempt to build a gate through the hedge that grows along the boundary between this world & that. Her gate-building has been a lifelong pursuit, & she hopes to have perhaps propped aside even one spiked loop of bramble (leaving a chink just big enough for a mud-kneeling, trusting eye to glimpse the beauty there beyond), before she goes through herself.

Always stubborn about living the things that make her heart sing, Rima’s houses have a tendency to be wheeled. She currently dwells in an old cottage on top of a hill on the edge of Dartmoor with her beloved, Tom, & their big-hearted, ice-eyed lurcher, Macha.

Rima’s inspirations include the world & language of folktale; faces of people who pass her on the street; folk music & art of Old Europe & beyond; peasant & nomadic living; magics of every feather; wilderness & plant-lore; the margins of thought, experience, community & spirituality; & the beauty in otherness.

Crumbs fall from Rima’s threadbare coat pockets as she travels, & can be found collected here, where you may join the caravan.